Finance

There’s plenty of uncertainty in the markets now: What’s going to happen with North Korea? What will the United States look like if several more major hurricanes rampage its shores? Will Congress and the president agree to some sort of tax reform? Where can investors generate some alpha today? Those are only a handful of

The price of bitcoin fell sharply after a report China’s regulators are planning a further crackdown on the digital currency. Local outlet Caixin is reporting the Asian country is planning to shut down local bitcoin exchanges, according to a Google translation. Bitcoin’s price fell 7 percent midafternoon Friday after the news, according to Coindesk market

Akzo Nobel issued a profit warning on Friday and announced a revamp that will include the chief financial officer stepping aside and a shake-up to its paints and industrial coatings businesses. The Dutch company, citing cost inflation and currency headwinds, said it would not achieve the 100 million euros ($121 million) in 2017 operating profit

Shares in the property market, another set of old-economy companies, have also climbed, even though not all stocks in the sector have experienced the same boost. Share prices of property developer Vanke spiked 23.14 percent from Jun. 1 until Thursday, after mostly stagnating in the first four months of the year. Poly Real Estate has

Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg | Getty Images Stanley Fischer, vice chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve The U.S. dollar fell against a basket of currencies on Wednesday after Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer announced his resignation. The dollar index hit an eight-day low of 92.005 and hovered around that level at 11:31 a.m. in

Luke MacGregor | Bloomberg | Getty Images Pedestrians walk past the Bank of England (BOE) in the City of London, U.K. David Ramsden joined the Bank of England (BOE) Monday as deputy governor for markets, with analysts expecting the economist to stick to a dovish line for the bank and not opt for immediate rate

Check out the companies making headlines after the bell: Shares of Semtech dove 11.5 percent after hours following a mixed earnings announcement. The company beat earnings estimates but fell short of revenue estimates. The chip maker expects third quarter revenue between $145 million and $153 million and earnings per share between 48 cents and 52

The report, which surveyed about 4,000 people across China, India, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, Philippines and Indonesia, also found that despite the preference for cash, awareness of newer methods of payments was high. Nearly half said they were familiar with digital wallets and 23 percent said they knew what contactless payments using credit or debit

Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., on Monday, Aug. 21, 2017. Check out the companies making headlines after the bell: Finish Line shares plunged 23 percent in extended trading after the company announced its second quarter sales decreased

Amazon traded about 0.4 percent higher. Ben Bienvenu, a research analyst at Stephens, noted that Sprouts has more overlap than other retailers with Whole Foods’ business and attributed the outsized decline in Sprouts’ shares to “the price changes that we’ve seen in Whole Foods’ stores” and “exposure to Texas and potential for some store closures

Investors are slowing their roll around so-called unicorns, or privately held companies with a valuation of $1 billion or more on paper. According to a new report from PitchBook, only 17 U.S. companies have clicked over to unicorn status so far this year. In both 2014 and 2015 — the peak unicorn years — more

European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said Friday the global recovery is improving, but like an increasing number of financial and business leaders, warned about demographic challenges to growth. The euro spiked 1 percent to a high of $1.1940, its highest against the U.S. dollar since January 2015 after Draghi’s initial remarks. “The global recovery

Britain said on Friday it had received the additional advice it had requested on Rupert Murdoch’s bid to buy broadcaster Sky, and it would decide whether to refer the deal for an in-depth review as soon as possible. Regulator Ofcom was asked to look again at the deal earlier this month after opponents lobbied Minister

Oaktree’s Howard Marks sounded a general alarm last week about the state of stock markets, private equity, credit markets and — for good measure — new digital currencies like bitcoin and ethereum. Essentially, he wrote in his letter to investors that everything is overvalued. On the cryptocurrencies, he went further. He stated several times that

Traders are betting on even calmer stock markets as the S&P 500 persistently climbs higher. The CBOE Volatility Index (.VIX), known as the best gauge of fear in the market, fell Friday to 9.3, its lowest since Dec. 27, 1993, when the VIX hit a low of 8.89. Market analysts noted the decline in the

BlackRock, the largest asset manager in the world, posted second-quarter earnings and revenue that missed expectations. The company posted second-quarter adjusted earnings per share of $5.24 on revenue of $2.965 billion. In the year-earlier period, the company had posted adjusted earnings of $4.78 per share on sales of $2.804 billion. BlackRock shares fell 0.8 percent

The head of Hong Kong-listed China Minsheng Banking said it had lent Anbang Insurance Group only US$100 million, brushing aside speculation about a loan of up to 100 billion yuan (US$15 ­billion) to the insurance and financial giant, mainland ­media reported. The remarks by the bank board chairman, Hong Qi, came after reports that Anbang

A flood of Chinese bankers is changing the social fabric of Hong Kong, as they rapidly expand their footprint in one of the world’s premier financial centres, even as Beijing struggles to tame the former British colony politically. Twenty years after Hong Kong’s handover to Chinese rule, scores of mainland professionals are filling the elite

Bitcoin quickly bounced back from the lows of June, amid improved sentiment about the future of the digital currency. Bitcoin traded higher Saturday near $2,680, up more than 20 percent from a June low of $2,185.96 hit Thursday that had erased gains for the month, according to CoinDesk. Worries about overexuberance in digital currencies overall

There will be an explosion of volume at the close today as it is both a quadruple witching expiration (the quarterly expiration of stock index futures and options and individual stock and index futures and options) and the quarterly rebalancing of the S&P 500. The S&P rebalances every quarter to account for additions and reductions